Black Leadership Fails, Professor Writes

Contemporary Black leaders are ineffective in addressing current problems in the Afro-American community, according to a Kennedy School professor writing in the November issue of Penthouse Magazine.

Instead of helping to solve problems like "rampant drug use," "irresponsible sexuality" and high rape and murder rates, Black leaders merely repeat familiar charges of "slavery, racism, discrimination, and the callous policies of the Reagan administration," writes Professor of Public Policy Glenn C. Loury.

"Traditional civil rights leadership leaves much to be desired," according to Loury, who has written extensively on racial inequality.

Working class Blacks pay the price for their leaders' failure, states Loury, a Black whose conservative political opinions have sparked debate within the Afro-American community.

"The civil rights leadership continues to talk as if it were 1965," at a time when "a critical intellectual exchange" is needed, he writes in an article entitled, "The Failure of Black Leaders."

People who demand that all Blacks be loyal to the agenda of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) make this exchange difficult to achieve, according to Loury.

Local NAACP leaders said they agreed that there should be no blind loyalty to a group, but they disagreed strongly with Loury's negative assesment of current black leadership.

"The NAACP is vibrant and growing," said the president of the NAACP's Boston chapter, Jack E. Robinson.

Robinson cites decentralization of authority within the organization and the NAACP's incorporation of business techniques as progressive changes within the group.

"The need for the NAACP is more evident now than ever," Robinson said.

In his two-page article, Loury says the government should allow Blacks to tap their own potential through such means as educational vouchers, adoption programs and enterprise zones.

In addition, Loury sharply criticizes racial preferences and quotas, which are part of affirmative action programs.

"The use of different standards for the hiring of Blacks and whites seems to acknowledge the inability of Blacks to perform up to the white standard," the K-School professor writes. The use of separate standards for Blacks is becoming "commonplace," he states.

But others at Harvard disagree, saying that Loury is misleading in suggesting that affirmative action is a basis for different standards.

The use of quotas in hiring at institutions doing business with the federal government is forbidden by a U.S. executive order, said John B. Williams, Harvard's executive assistant to the president on affirmative action.

Even where quotas have been approved by court ruling as a remedy for previous racial discrimination, two different standards have not been permitted, Williams said.

Muriel Morisey Spence, director of policy analysis at the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs, said she knows of no documentation of different standards under affirmative action.

"I would love somebody who takes that position to prove it," said Spence, who previously decided employee discrimination cases for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Responding to Williams and Spence, Loury said in an interview that "no one will come out and say to you `we are using different standards."' But, he said, the pressure to employ the "correct" numbers of Blacks sometimes results in different implicit standards.

Several Black officials said that Loury is applying academic standards to race-related proposals without testing to see if people support his ideas.

"Leadership involves more than coming up with an idea and having it debated," Williams said.

"If he's serious about what he's saying--that there needs to be a new leadership--the only way to test that is to see if people buy the new idea. And I don't think he's done that," Williams said.